The Diary of a Saint

"I am glad for her to be useful," her father said, "especially as you have been so kind to her."

"Then you will perhaps let her stay all night," I went on. "I can take over her night-things. I promised to show her about making a new kind of pincushion for the church fair; and I could do it this evening. Besides, it is lonely for me in that great house."

I felt like a hypocrite when I said this, though it is true enough. He looked at me kindly, and even pityingly.

"Yes," he returned, "I can understand that. If you think she won't trouble you, and" —

I did not give him opportunity for a word more. I rose at once and held out my hand.

"Thank you so much," I said. "I'll find Mrs. Thurston, and get Kathie's things. I beg your pardon for troubling you."

I was out of the study before he could reconsider. Across the hall I found his wife in the sitting-room with another air-tight stove, and looking thinner and paler than he. She had a great pile of sewing beside her, and her eyes looked as if months of tears were behind them, aching to be shed.

I told her Mr. Thurston had given leave for Kathie to pass the night with me, and I had come for her night-things. She looked surprised, but none the less pleased. While she was out of the room I looked cautiously at the mending to see if the clothing was too worn for her to be willing that I should see it. When she came in with her little bundle, I said, as indifferently as I could, "I suppose if Kathie were at home she would help you with the mending, so I'll take her share with me, and we'll do it together." Of course she remonstrated, but I managed to bring away a good part of the big pile, and now it is all done. Poor Mrs. Thurston, she looked so tired, so beaten down by life, the veins were so blue on her thin temples! If I dared, I'd go every week and do that awful mending for her. I must get Kathie to smuggle some of it over now and then. When we blame these people for the narrowness of their theology, we forget their lives are so constrained and straitened that they cannot take broad views of anything. The man or woman who could take a wide outlook upon life from behind an air-tight stove in a half-starved home would have to be almost a miracle. It is wonderful that so much sweetness and humanity keep alive where circumstances are so discouraging. When I think of patient, faithful, hard-working women like Mrs. Thurston, uncomplaining and devoted, I am filled with admiration and humility. If their theology is narrow, they endure it; and, after all, men have made it for them. Father said once women had always been the occasion of theology, but had never produced any. I asked him, I remember, whether he said this to their praise or discredit, and he answered that what was entirely the result of nature was neither to be praised nor to be blamed; women were so made that they must have a religion, and men so constituted as to take the greatest possible satisfaction in inventing one. "It is simply a beautiful example," he added, with his wonderful smile which just curled the corners of his mouth, "of the law of supply and demand."

I am running on and on, although it is so late at night. Aunt Naomi, I presume, will in some occult way know about it, and ask me why I sat up so long. I am tired, but the excitement of the afternoon is not all gone. That any one in the world should believe it possible for Mother to be unhappy in another life, to be punished, is amazing! Surely a man whose theology makes such an idea conceivable is profoundly to be pitied.

May 19. Hannah is perfectly delightful about Tomine. She hardly lets a day go by without admonishing me not to spoil baby, and yet she is herself an abject slave to the slightest caprice of the tyrannous small person. We have to-night been having a sort of battle royal over baby's going to sleep by herself in the dark. I made up my mind the time had come when some semblance of discipline must be begun, and I supposed, of course, that Hannah would approve and assist. To my surprise she failed me at the very first ditch.

"I am going to put Tomine into the crib," I announced, "and take away the light. She must learn to go to sleep in the dark."

"She'll be frightened," Rosa objected.

"She's too little to know anything about being afraid," I retorted loftily, although I had secretly a good deal of misgiving.

"Too little!" sniffed Hannah. "She's too little not to be afraid."

I saw at a glance that I had before me a struggle with them as well as with baby.

"Children are not afraid of the dark until they are told to be," I declared as dogmatically as possible.

"They are told not to be," objected Rosa.

"But that puts the idea into their heads," was my answer.

Hannah regarded me with evident disapprobation.

"But supposing the baby cries?" she demanded.

"Then she must be left to stop," I answered, with outward firmness and inward quakings.

"But suppose she cries herself sick?" insisted Rosa.

"She won't. She'll just cry a little till she finds nobody comes, and then she'll go to sleep."

The two girls regarded me with looks that spoke disapproval in the largest of capitals. It is so seldom they are entirely united that it was disconcerting to have them thus make common cause against me, but I had to keep up for the sake of dignity if for nothing else. Thomasine was fed and arranged for the night; she was kissed and cuddled, and tucked into her crib. Then I got Hannah and Rosa, both protesting they didn't mind sitting up with the darling all night, out of the room, darkened the windows, and shut baby in alone for the first time in her whole life, a life still so pathetically little.

I closed the nursery door with an air of great calmness and determination, but outside I lingered like a complete coward. The girls were glowering darkly from the end of the hall, and we needed only candlelight to look like three bloodthirsty conspirators. For two or three minutes there was a soothing and deceptive silence, so that I turned to smile with an air of superior wisdom on the maids. Then without warning baby uplifted her voice and wailed.

There was something most disconcertingly explosive about the cry, as if Thomasine had been holding her breath until she were black in the face, and only let it escape one second short of actual suffocation. I jumped as if a mouse had sprung into my face, and the two girls swooped down upon me in a whirl of triumphant indignation.

"There, Miss Ruth!" cried Hannah.

"There, Miss Privet!" cried Rosa.

"Well," I said defensively; "I expected her to cry some."

"She wants to be walked with, poor little thing," Rosa said incautiously.

I was rejoiced to have a chance to turn the tables, and I sprang upon her tacit admission at once.

"Rosa," I said severely, "have you been walking Thomasine to sleep? I told you never to do it."

Rosa, self-convicted, could only murmur that she had just taken her up and down two or three times to make her sleepy; she hadn't really walked her to sleep.

"What if she had?" Hannah demanded boldly, her place entirely forgotten in the excitement of the moment. "If babies like to be walked to sleep, it stands to reason that's nature."

I began to feel as if all authority were fast slipping away from me, and that I should at this rate soon become a very secondary person in my own house. I tried to recover myself by assuming the most severe air of which I was capable.

"You must not talk outside the nursery door," I told them. "If Thomasine hears voices, of course she'll keep on crying. Go downstairs, both of you. I'll see to baby."

They had not yet arrived at open mutiny, and so with manifest unwillingness they departed, grumbling to each other as they went. Baby seemed to have some superhuman intelligence that her firmest allies were being routed, for she set up a series of nerve-splitting shrieks which made every fibre of my body quiver. As soon as the girls were out of sight I flopped down on my knees outside of the door, and put my hands over my ears. I was afraid of myself, and only the need I felt of holding out for Tomine's own sake gave me strength to keep from rushing into the nursery in abject surrender.

The absurdity of it makes me laugh now, but with the shrieks of baby piercing me, I felt as if I were involved in a tragedy of the deepest dye. I think I was never so near hysterics in my life; but I had even then some faint and far-away sense of how ridiculous I was, and that saved me. Thomasine yelled like a young tornado, and every cry went through me like a knife. I was on my knees on the floor, pouring out tears like a watering-pot, trying to shut out the sound. There is something in a baby's cry that is too much even for a sense of humor; and no woman could have heard it without being overcome.

I had so stopped my ears that although I could not shut out baby's cries entirely I did not hear Hannah and Rosa when they came skulking back. The first I knew of their being behind me was when Hannah, in a whispered bellow, shouted into my ear that baby would cry herself into convulsions. Demoralized as I was already, I almost yielded; I started to my feet, and faced them in a tragic manner, ready to give up everything. I was ready to say that Rosa might walk up and down with Tomine every night for the rest of her life. Fortunately some few gleams of common sense asserted themselves in my half-addled pate, and instead of opening the door, I spread out my arms, and without a word shooed the girls out of the corridor as if they were hens. Then the ludicrousness of it came over me, and although I still tingled with baby's wailing, I could appreciate that the cries were more angry than pathetic, and that we must fight the battle through now it had been begun. The drollest thing about it all was that it seemed almost as if the willful little lady inside there had some uncanny perception of my thought. I had no sooner got the girls downstairs again, and made up my mind to hold out than she stopped crying; and when we crept cautiously in ten minutes after, she was asleep as soundly and as sweetly as ever.

But I feel as if I had been through battles, murders, and sudden deaths.

May 20. Baby to-night cried two or three minutes, but her ladyship evidently had the sense to see that crying is a painful and useless exercise when she has to deal with such a hard-hearted tyrant as I am, and she quickly gave it up. Rosa hoped pointedly that the poor little thing's will isn't broken, and Hannah observed piously that she trusted I realized we all of us had to be treated like babies by our Heavenly Father. I was tempted to ask her if our Heavenly Father never left us to cry in the dark. If we could be as firm with ourselves as we can be with other people, what an improvement it would be. I wonder what Tom would think of my first conflict with his baby.

May 25. I went to-day to call on Mrs. Weston. Although I am in mourning, I thought it better to go. I feared lest she should think my old relations to George might have something to do with my staying away.

It was far less difficult than I thought it would be. I may be frank in my diary, I suppose, and say I found her silly and rather vulgar, and I wonder how George can help seeing it. She was inclined to boast a little that all the best people in town had called.

"Olivia Watson acted real queer about my wedding-calls," she said. "She doesn't seem to know the rich folks very well."

"Oh, we never make distinctions in Tuskamuck by money," I put in; but she went on without heeding.

"Olivia said Mrs. Andrews – she called her Lady Andrews, just as if she was English."

"It is a way we have," I returned. "I'm sure I don't know how it began. Very likely it is only because it fits her so well."

"Well, anyway, she called; and Olivia owned she'd never been to see them. I could see she was real jealous, though she wouldn't own it."

"Old lady Andrews is a delightful person," I remarked awkwardly, feeling that I must say something.

"I didn't think she was much till Olivia told me," returned Mrs. Weston, with amazing frankness. "I thought she was a funny old thing."

It is not kind to put this down, I know; but I really would like to see if it sounds so unreal when it is written as it did when it was said. It was so unlike anything I ever heard that it seemed almost as if Mrs. Weston were playing a part, and trying to cheat me into thinking her more vulgar and more simple than she is. I am afraid I shall not lessen my unpleasant impression, however, by keeping her words.

Mrs. Weston talked, too, about George and his devotion as if she expected me to be hurt. Possibly I was a little; although if I were, it was chiefly because my vanity suffered that he should find me inferior in attraction to a woman like this. I believe I am sincerely glad that he should prove his fondness for his wife. Indeed fondness could be the only excuse for his leaving me, and I do wish happiness to them both.

I fear what I have written gives the worst of Mrs. Weston. She perhaps was a little embarrassed, but she showed me nothing better. She is not a lady, and I see perfectly that she will drop out of our circle. We are a little Cranfordish here, I suppose, but anywhere in the world people come in the long run to associate with their own kind. Mrs. Weston is not our kind; and even if this did not affect our attitude, she would herself tire of us after the first novelty is worn off.

May 26. George came in this morning on business, and before he went he thanked me for calling on his wife.

"I shouldn't have made a wedding-call just now on anybody else," I told him; "but your association with Father and the way in which we have known you of course make a difference."

He showed some embarrassment, but apparently – at least so I thought – he was so anxious to know what I thought of Mrs. Weston that he could not drop the subject.

"Gertrude isn't bookish," he remarked rather confusedly. "I hope you found things to talk about."

"Meaning that I can talk of nothing but books?" I returned. "Poor George, how I must have bored you in times past."

He flushed and grew more confused still.

"Of course you know I didn't mean anything like that," he protested.

I laughed at his grave face, and then I was so glad to find I could talk to him about his wife without feeling awkward that I laughed again. He looked so puzzled I was ready to laugh in turn at him, but I restrained myself. I could not understand my good spirits, and for that matter I do not now. Somehow my call of yesterday seems to have made a difference in my feeling toward George. Just how or just what I cannot fully make out. I certainly have not ceased to care about him. I am still fond of the George I have known for so many years; but somehow the husband of Mrs. Weston does not seem to be the same man. The George Weston who can love this woman and be in sympathy with her is so different from anything I have known or imagined the old George to be that he affects me as a stranger.

The truth is I have for the past month been in the midst of things so serious that my own affairs and feelings have ceased to appear of so much importance. When death comes near enough for us to see it face to face, we have a better appreciation of values, and find things strangely altered. I have had, moreover, little time to think about myself, which is always a good thing; and to my surprise I find now that I am not able to pity myself nearly as much as I did.

This seems perhaps a little disloyal to George. My feeling for him cannot have evaporated like dew drying from the grass. At least I am sure that I am still ready to serve him to the very best of my ability.

VI
JUNE

June 1. Cousin Mehitable is capable of surprises. She has written to Deacon Richards to have my baby taken away from me.

The Deacon came in to-night, so amused that he was on the broad grin when he presented himself, and chuckling even when he said good-evening.

"What pleases you?" I asked. "You seem much amused about something."

"I am," he answered. "I've been appointed your guardian."

"By the town authorities?" I demanded. "I should have thought I was old enough to look after myself."

"It's your family," he chuckled. "Miss Privet has written to me from Boston."

"Cousin Mehitable?" I exclaimed.

"Miss Mehitable Privet," he returned.

"She has written to you about me?" asked I.

He nodded, in evident delight over the situation.

My astonishment got the better of my manners so that I forgot to ask him to sit down, but stood staring at him like a booby. I remembered Cousin Mehitable had met him once or twice on her infrequent visits to Tuskamuck, and had been graciously pleased to approve of him, – largely, I believe, on account of some accidental discovery of his very satisfactory pedigree. That she should write to him, however, was most surprising, and argued an amount of feeling on her part much greater than I had appreciated. I knew she would be shocked and perhaps scandalized by my having baby, and she had written to me with sufficient emphasis, but I did not suppose she would invoke outside aid in her attempts to dispossess me of Thomasine.

"But why should she write to you?" I asked Deacon Daniel.

"She said," was his answer, "she didn't know who else to write to."

"But what did she expect you to do?"

The Deacon chuckled and caressed his beardless chin with a characteristic gesture. When he is greatly amused he seizes himself by the chin as if he must keep his jaw stiff or an undeaconical laugh would come out in spite of him.

"I don't think she cared much what I did if I relieved you of that baby," was his reply. "She said if I was any sort of a guardian of the poor perhaps I could put it in a home."

"But you are not," I said.

"No," he assented.

"And you shouldn't have her if you were," I added.

"I don't want the child," Deacon Daniel returned. "I shouldn't know what to do with it."

Then we both laughed, and I got him seated in Father's chair, and we had a long chat over the whole situation. I had not realized how much I wanted to talk matters over with somebody. Aunt Naomi is out of the question, because she is so fond of telling things; Miss Charlotte would be better, but she is not very worldly wise; and if I may tell the truth, I wanted to talk with a man. The advice of women is wise often, and yet more often it is comforting; but it has somehow not the conclusiveness of the decision of a sensible man. At least that is the way I felt to-night, though in many matters I should never think of trusting to a man's judgment.

"I think I shall adopt baby legally," I said. "Then nobody could take her away or bother me about her."

He asked me if her father would agree, and I said that I was sure he would.

"It would make her your heir if you died without a will," he commented.

I said that nothing was more easy than to make a will, and of course I should mean to provide for her.

"You are not afraid of wills, then?" Deacon Daniel observed, looking at me curiously. "So many folks can't bear the idea of making one."

"Very likely it's partly because I am a lawyer's daughter," I said; "but in any case making a will wouldn't have any more terrors for me than writing a check. But then I never had any fear of death anyway."

Deacon Daniel regarded me yet more intently, clasping his great white hands over his knee.

"I never can quite make you out, Miss Ruth," he said after a little. "You haven't any belief in a hereafter that I know of, but you seem to have no trouble about it."

I asked him why I should have, and he answered that most people do.

"Perhaps that is because they feel a responsibility about the future that I don't," I returned. "I don't think I can alter what is to come after death, and I don't see what possible good I can do by fretting about it. Father brought me up, you know, to feel that I had all I could attend to in making the best I can of this life, without wasting my strength in speculating about another. In any case I can't see why I should be any more afraid of death than I am of sleep. I understand one as well as I do the other."

He looked at the rug thoughtfully a moment, and then, as if he declined to be drawn into an argument, he came back to the original subject of our talk.

"Would Tom Webbe want to have anything to do with the child?" he asked.

"I think he would rather forget she is in the world," I told him. "By and by he may be fond of her, but now he tries not to think of her at all. I want to make her so attractive and lovely he can't help caring for her."

"But then she will care for him," the Deacon commented.

"Why, of course she will. That is what I hope. Then she might influence him, and help him."

"You are willing to share her with her father even if you do adopt her?" he asked.

I did not understand his manner, but I told him I did not think I had any right to deprive her of her father's affection or him of hers if I adopted her a dozen times over.

The Deacon made no answer. His face was graver, and for some time we sat without further word.

"Tom Webbe isn't as bad as he seems, Miss Ruth," Deacon Daniel said at length. "If you had to live with his mother, I guess you'd be ready to excuse him for 'most anything. His father never had the spunk to say boo to a goose, and Mrs. Webbe has bullied him from the time we were boys. He's as good as a man can be, but it's a pity he don't carry out Paul's idea of being ruler in his own house."

"Paul was a bachelor like you, Deacon Daniel," I answered, rather saucily; "and neither of you knows anything about it."

He grinned, but only added that Tom had been nagged into most of his wildness.

"I'm not excusing him," he went on, apparently afraid that he should seem to be condoning iniquity; "but there's a good deal to be said for him. Aunt Naomi says he ought to be driven out of decent society, but Tom Webbe never did a mean thing in his life."

I was rather surprised to hear this defense from Deacon Richards, but I certainly agreed with him. Tom's sin makes me cringe; but I realize that I'm not capable of judging him, and he certainly has a good deal of excuse for whatever evil he has fallen into.

June 2. One thing more which Deacon Richards said has made me think a good deal. He asked me what Tom had meant to do about the child if its mother lived. I told him Julia had been willing for me to have baby in any case. He thought in silence a moment.

"I don't believe," he said, "Tom ever meant to live with that woman. He must have married her to clear his conscience."

"He married her so the child should not be disgraced," I answered.

Deacon Daniel looked at me with those great keen eyes glowing beneath his shaggy white brows.

"Then he went pretty far toward clearing his record," was his comment. "There are not many men would have tied themselves to such a wife for the sake of a child."

This was not very orthodox, perhaps, but a good heart will get the better of orthodoxy now and then. It has set me to thinking about Tom and his wife in a way which had not occurred to me. I wonder if it is true that he did not mean to live with her. I remember now that he said he would never see Julia again, but at the time this meant nothing to me. If he had thought of making a home, he would naturally expect to have his child, but after all I doubt if at that time he considered anything except the good of baby. He did not love her; he had not even looked at her; but he tried to do her right as far as he could. He could give her an honest name in the eyes of the world, but he must have known that he could not make a home with Julia where the surroundings would be good for a child. This must have been what he considered for the moment. Yet Tom is one who thinks out things, and he may have thought out the future of the mother too.

When I look back I wonder how it was I consented so quickly to take Tomine. I wanted to help Tom, and I wanted him to be able to decide without being forced by any consideration of baby. I do not know whether he ought to have married Julia for her own sake. If she had lived, I am afraid I should have been tempted to think he had better not have bound himself to her; and yet I realize that I should have been disappointed in him if he had decided not to do it. I doubt if I could have got rid entirely of the feeling that somehow he would have been cowardly. I wonder if he had any notion of my feeling? He came out of the trial nobly, at least, and I honor him with all my heart for that.

June 5. Aunt Naomi has now a theme exactly to her taste in the growing extravagance of George's wife. Mrs. Weston has certainly elaborated her style of dress a good deal, a thing which is the more noticeable from the fact that in Tuskamuck we are on the whole so little given to gorgeous raiment. I remember that when I called I thought her rather overdressed. To-day Aunt Naomi talked for half an hour with the greatest apparent enjoyment about the fine gowns and expensive jewelry with which the bride is astonishing the town. I am afraid it does not take much to set us talking. I tried half a dozen times to-day to change the subject, but my efforts were wasted. Aunt Naomi was not to be diverted from a theme so congenial. I reminded her that any bride was expected to display her finery – this is part of the established formality with which marriage is attended.

"That's all very well," she retorted with a sniff; "folks want to see the wedding outfit. This is finery George Weston has had to pay for himself."

"I don't see how anybody can know that," I told her; and I added that it did not seem to me to be the town's business if it were true.

"She tells everybody he gave her the jewelry," Aunt Naomi responded; "and the dresses she's had made since she was married. She hadn't anything herself. The Watsons say she was real poor."

"The marriage was so sudden," I said, "that very likely she hadn't time to get her wedding outfit. At any rate, Aunt Naomi, I don't see what you and I have to do with her clothes."

The dear old gossip went on wagging her foot and smiling with evident delight.

"It's the business of the neighbors that she's sure to ruin her husband if she keeps on with her extravagance, isn't it? Besides, she wears her clothes to have them talked about. She talks about them herself."

"A few dresses won't ruin her husband," I protested.

"She has one hired girl now, and she's talking of a second," Aunt Naomi went on, unshaken. "Did you ever hear of such foolishness?"

I reminded her that I had two maids myself.

"Oh, you," she returned; "that's different. I hope you don't put her on a level with real folks, do you?"

I tried to treat the whole matter as if it were of no consequence, and I did stop the talk here; but secretly I am troubled. George has very little aside from what he earns in his profession, and he might easily run behind if his wife is really extravagant. He needs a woman to help him save.

June 6. Tomine delighted the family to-day by her wonderful precocity in following with her eyes the flight of a blue-bottle fly that buzzed about the nursery. Such intelligence in one so young is held by us women to betoken the most extraordinary promise. I communicated the important event to Mr. Saychase, who came to call, and he could neither take it gravely nor laugh at the absurdity of our noticing so slight a thing. He seemed to be trying to find out how I wished him to look at it; and as I was divided between laughter and secret pride in baby he could not get a sure clue. How dull the man is; but no doubt he is good. When piety and stupidity are united, it is unfortunate that they should be made prominent by being set high in spiritual places.

June 9. I have a good deal of sympathy with Cain's question when he asked the Lord if he were his brother's keeper. Of course his crime turned the question in his case into a mere pitiful excuse, but Cain was at least clever enough to take advantage of a principle which must appeal to everybody. We cannot be responsible for others when we have neither authority nor control over them. It is one of the hardest forms of duty, it seems to me, when we feel that we ought to do our best, yet are practically sure that in the end we can effect little or nothing. What can I do to influence George's wife? Somehow we seem to have no common ground to meet on. Father used to say that people who do not speak the same ethical language cannot communicate moral ideas to each other. This is rather a high-sounding way of saying that Mrs. Weston and I cannot understand each other when anything of real importance comes up. It is of course as much my fault as hers, but I really do not know how to help or change it. I suppose there is a certain arrogance and self-righteousness in my feeling that I could direct her, but I am certainly older and I believe I am wiser. Yet I am not her keeper, and if to feel that I am not involves me in the cowardice of Cain, I cannot help it. I am ready to do anything I can do, but what is there?

June 11. Still it is George's wife. I dare say a good deal of talk has been circulating, and I have not heard it. I have been so occupied with graver matters ever since George was married that I have seen few people, and have paid little heed to the village talk. To-day old lady Andrews said her say. She began by reminding me of the conversation we had had in regard to calling on the bride.

"I am glad we did it, Ruth," she went on. "It puts us in the right whatever happens; but she will not do. I shall never ask her to my house."

I could say nothing. I knew she was right, but I was so sorry for George.

"She is vulgar, Ruth," the sweet old voice went on. "She called a second time on me yesterday, and I've been only once to see her. She said a good deal about it's being the duty of us – she said 'us,' my dear, – to wake up this sleepy old place. I told her that, personally, since she was good enough to include me with herself, I preferred the town as it had been."